Newcastle Must Keep This Player This Season

Written by Dr. Ed Harrison

11:03am Sunday, February 7th, 2016

Commented 122 times

There were quite a few of Newcastle’s players put in what could be called Man of the Match displays yesterday against West Brom and it’s a long time since so many of Newcastle’s players played near their best form.

One of those players was a shock starter yesterday – Cheick Tiote – and you wonder what Henri Saivet had done wrong after being one of our best players in the debacle at Everton in midweek.

But the Ivory Coast international soon showed that McClaren had made the right call as Cheick quickly got a grip on midfield and looked like the player he was in his prime.

And he scored another great goal – but it was controversially disallowed by the referee, much like the goal he scored against Manchester City a couple of years ago.

Cheick Tiote – in action yesterday But maybe there’s still a lot left to come from Cheick, who has been playing for us this year – it seems McClaren can get the best out of a player he first managed at FC Twente in 2008.

This is what McClaren said about Cheick after the game:

“We didn’t want him to leave. I think his performances just before he left were excellent against Arsenal and Watford, to be fair, and Manchester United.”

“He just shows what he brings. We threw him in because that’s what we need.” “He fights on the field, he genuinely wants the ball, he never gives up, and he epitomizes what we want from this team.”

“We said if we win, we’ll get out of the bottom three, which is important.” “But you have to gather the points. We have got a tough one at Chelsea, we knew that, so this was a big game to win.”

“We know that from Chelsea onwards, we have got 18 days and we will have injuries coming back from that.”

It would be ludicrous if Newcastle allow Cheick to leave the club for China this month – the transfer window there doesn’t close until the end of the month.

Cheick has a contract at Newcastle until June of next year and we are in danger of being relegated this season.

He’s a Newcastle player and the club simply have to tell Cheick that he must honor his contract – at least until the summer.

It’s as easy as that but Newcastle seem to think they have to let players leave when they want to.

That’s nonsense.

And in any case if Cheick stars for Newcastle through the end of the season he will get some big offers coming in this summer.

It could be a win-win situation – good for Cheick and good for Newcastle, because we could get a bigger fee for him.

Tiote could be one of one of our saviors this season and the way he brilliantly teamed up with Jonjo Shelvey to completely dominate the midfield yesterday was great to watch.

122 comments so far

Repost; Regarding Shelvey; No doubt he can play some matchwinning passes, making him a very important player. But I think he could do a lot better to be honest! He looks a bit unfit, and I think he could work harder off the ball to reach the open spaces making it easier for the other players to pass him the ball! In stead of moving he’s pointing for them to pass somewhere else…

Rotonda/Williamson Ed fickle? I’ve been highlighting that before today. Now he comes out with that classic. Incredible! Funny how one good performance turns the world the right way up. You couldn’t make it up. He’s not the only fickle one on here mind.

Shelvey’s is static because that’s the role he’s playing within the formation we are playing. Think of Xabi Alonso in his Liverpool days (not saying Shelvey’s is as good!) but he sat at the base of midfield and dictated play.

One good performance and everyone goes mad! Tiote showed what we’ve been missing and should be in the team every week… Same goes for Taylor when fit, would like to see him and mbemba together…

Still worried about the squad though, drastically dropped in quality since that season we finished fifth, still got tiote, Taylor, Colo and cisse but a few years on, and as for the rest of the squad the only one who get in the team that finished 5th would be janmaat in for simpson…. wijnaldum and mbemba are of similar quality to what we had and Perez will be, but all 3 have developing to do… Lots of time passed and money spend but no real improvement, and anyone that thinks were top 6 material needs there head checked, we are where we are for a reason. Still got a long hard run in were not safe yet…

I’m with the keep him til we’re safe brigade…the chinese will still take him at the end of the year and he’ll get his pension topped up no end over there, but this club needs to realise the wages he’ll cost us til the end of the season and even the 3 million is nothing in comparison to staying up.

Blackley you got that right most are, the next poll results will probably have 90% down for a win because of west brom making us look good, not convinced we’d have walked a better team like that…

And Charlie if macca doesn’t stick with that team the man’s a fool, that’s one thing that used to grind my gears with Pardew, stick with a losing team/tactics until we got lucky, but changed things when we won.. If your team performs you stick with it, as a reward if anything… Must be gutting for a player to perform well and then get dropped, whilst seeing others perform badly at other times and keep their place! the m’biwa Willo partnership springs to mind 3 clean sheets then boom instantly dropped when Colo was back…

I never saw the game just a few highlights on Monday but what I saw and reading between the lines we seemed to play well. Was that down to West Brom being poor or us totally oot playing them? Maybe a bit of both? It was the other way around when we played Everton such is the inconsistent play we’ve produced for a long time.

Jail – all over the internet for a start, saying how well we played how brilliant townsend was and shelvey was etc when most were saying how terrible we were before the game, just seems as though one game changes the minds of everybody! Like don’t get me wrong it’s the best performance I’ve seen from us in a long time but no reason to get carried away… The last couple of games are some of the worst I’ve seen…

Just think west brom made us look better than we were yesterday, you wouldn’t say Watford or everton were particularly exceptional against us would you? To me it was a very similar game to those to just in reverse for a change!

Charlie, Jesper who doesn’t watch games claims that Saviet was one of our better players against Everton, he may well have been but we lost horribly, we also played shite agai st Watford with him starting and dropped the pace when he came on against W Ham, it is purely opinion whether this is a coincidence or not.

Jail fair point of those two but obertan actually had a half decent season that year, and id put dummett and raylor about even at this point in time, both dummett and townsend have got time to improve though…

And they wernt first choice either mind, take santon and Benny over dummett and townsend any day of the week.. Would of made a much stronger bench though, if only the powers that be had the initiative to build on the squad and spend 80m then…

Saivet was poison against Everton and has all the attributes of another Carr flop. Tiote is an excellent DM and look how Shelveys performance improved beside him. I hope he’s still at the club for another couple of seasons. Mbembas absence certainly helped. He has good potential but he’s young and gets himself in poor positions which easily allows the opposition to find holes in our rear guard. I wouldn’t get too carried away however as WBA were atrocious. Pulis should be sacked for starting four centre halves. We possibly have three defeats coming our way next. So maybe give Saivet, Perez, Mbemba, Aarons, Doumbia etc a run out in these as to not destroy core moral.

On the tiote thing said that plenty of times, when it comes to putting your foot and regaining possession he’s the best at the club, and for some reason or another we’ve collected a vast number of box to box type midfielder that arent good enough defensively to play the holding role, or good enough at getting forward to play the attacking role… Abit like having alot of wingers that can’t dribble or cross a ball…

Jail what makes you angry? I think going backwards is pretty much the only thing we have done since then.

And no I’m trying to argue that obertan is good in anyway I think the lads utter garbage and the worst part of that squad, just that one half a season he played he wasn’t that bad, and when the first 11 was available he wasn’t first choice like townsend is. Ba, cisse and Benny up top or townsend sissoko and mitro? Easy choice for me…

Williamson is Bramble in disguise It is just the ridiculous pendulum swing of opinion of the inexperienced footy fan . Many of whom post on the internet and some even on this blog. I don’t think we were nearly as bad at Everton as the drama queens would have us believe (we were still in it to win a point up to the 88th minute) and we were flattered a bit yesterday by a terrible WBA performance.

Jib You’re right. Makro has that superstitious thing where he thinks it favours us if stays in the dressing when the game’s going on. I’m not one for superstition but he might be onto something with that one.

Jib I have to disagree I watched the everton game and thought we were terrible, on the same note I though west brom were terrible yesterday, I actually thought the games were extremely similar just from a different viewpoint… I didn’t think we were in the game atall at everton and it could of easily been 5 or 6, but I didn’t think everton were particularly great we were just that poor, and at the same time we could have won by 5 or 6 yesterday… Doesn’t mean we were all that good, west brom just didn’t seem up for it, not saying we didn’t play well, just not getting carried away until we do that against a team that turns up!

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I was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer in February 2017 and completed four months of chemotherapy in late July and will continue to have hormone treatment.

The cancer spread in the bones but it has been stabilized and has not spread further.

I am still recovering from some of the side effects of the chemo treatment - it's mainly severe fatigue and exhaustion.

Stage 4 cancer is not curable so I will continue to have cat scans and bone scans every four months to ensure the cancer is not spreading.

It is as it is - these things happen - and I will do my very best under the circumstances.

Ed Harrison

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